


Wrong Way to Die

by alex_kade



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: ALL THE BROMANCE, Bromance, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I'm not sorry, Part of the The Great Migration, i've been inflicting pain on my favs for a long time, old as dirt story, written after the original Avengers movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:01:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24601276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alex_kade/pseuds/alex_kade
Summary: And old work migrated over from FFN. Apparently I was all about keeping Coulson up in this 'verse because he's mentioned. Sounds like something I'd do, lol.Original A/N: Just wanted to put the boys in danger without it being about a super villain. Sometimes it's just about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Kudos: 7





	Wrong Way to Die

Tony watched as his teammate continued to resemble a circus tiger going back and forth in its cage.

"Will you please stop that? You should sit down. You'll feel better, I can pretty much guarantee it. Look over here at me. I'm fine. Relaxed. As in _not_ on the verge of a panic attack... Clint!"

Clint stopped his pacing and whirled around to stare at Tony, who looked entirely too comfortable sitting on a piece of concrete with his feet propped up on a pile of rubble, his head leaning back against one of the support beams that was still miraculously standing.

"Can you not lean on that, please?" he asked, the agitation clear in his tone.

Tony looked up to where the support was holding the slanted ceiling in place. "Uh, I seriously doubt the weight of my head alone is going to move this thing...or are you making a joke at my expense involving swelled heads applying more force than tectonic plates shifting beneath our feet? Because if that's the case, that's just uncalled for. Clever, but uncalled for."

He frowned when Barton didn't take the bait, the archer merely blinking at him in cold annoyance before returning to his goal of apparently wearing a circular trench in the floor like characters did in cartoons. After going around five and a half more times to Tony's count, he stopped. "Can't you just blast us out of here? And I'm not on the verge of a panic attack."

Stark sighed. "If you weren't on the verge of a panic attack, I wouldn't have to explain this again. Let me put it in kindergarten terms. I blast a hole, everything falls down, we get squashed. Is that too big a word? Maybe flattened, smooshed, turned into little Iron Man and Hawkeye pancakes-"

"I don't need the mental image, thanks."

"Right. Good. Then you get it. Just think of it as removing a stone from an arch. The pressure from all the tons of concrete and metal that fell into this very convenient dome above us is literally all that's holding the structure together. Unless you've been hiding the fact that you're secretly the world's best Jenga player - which I admit, I'd be a little hurt if you were keeping something of that magnitude from us - then I think we probably shouldn't go putting holes in the walls...or what _were_ walls. Now they're just compacted rubble, really..."

"Tony. Shut up."

Clint once again began his incessant pacing, and it was _really_ starting to wear on Tony's nerves. As far as he knew, Hawkeye had never exhibited any signs of claustrophobia before, and their current place of entrapment was quite a bit larger than some of the other places they'd found themselves stuck in. With Tony basically being his own human flashlight they'd never be stuck in total darkness, the dust from stone impacting stone had already settled enough to breathe somewhat decently, their teammates had been clear of the building when the quake hit and Tony was able to alert them to their situation, there were no useless civilians milling around to worry about, and it didn't seem like there was a super villain around a nearby corner waiting to blow them up. Sure, the labs they came across on various floors here and there contained some pretty nasty stuff, but everything had been completely abandoned by the looks of it. Clint and Tony had been in different areas of the old medical building when the earth began shaking, but both had been able to make it down to the lobby relatively unscathed just in time for the whole place to literally come down around them. Tony had a nice little gash above his right eye where a rock nailed him when he had prematurely removed his helmet, and Clint's left arm was bleeding slightly here and there from an encounter with a window while he had been making his escape from the upper floor, but aside from some other minor cuts and bruises, they were astoundingly intact for two guys who just had a whole building dropped on their heads.

So the question still remained, why the hell was Clint so restless?

A thought struck him. "Hey, man, if you have to, um…squat in a corner or something, I can go to the other side of the room…"

Barton stopped walking and looked quizzically at Stark for a second before it dawned on him what the man was trying to say. "No! Tony…no, I don't have to- Just drop it, okay? We'll just wait for the others to get us out. Can't take that long, right? Maybe a few hours tops?"

"Really, Clint, I totally understand the call of nature. Don't feel like you have to wait those few hours on my account. I draw the line at defecation jokes."

"Tony!" The shout echoed off the walls of their enclosure, dropping some loose dust down to the ground. That was enough to quell Barton's rising anger, and he promptly clamped his mouth shut in order to resume his circular trek to nowhere.

Tony watched him for a few more seconds and decided maybe he had misread the situation.

"If you're late for a date, I'm sure she'll understand," he offered instead.

Clint ignored him.

"…Okay…not a date. Tickets for a game? There'll be more games. I'll spring for some seats if it's really that big a deal."

Still no response.

Tony snapped his fingers. "You forgot to feed the three-headed kangaroo lizard."

"What?" Clint asked.

"Ah ha! You _were_ listening…so why aren't you talking to me?"

"I'm not talking to you because you're being a pain in the ass, just like you always are. I'm just not in the mood to deal with it right now."

Tony slouched back further and crossed his arms over his chest. "Fine."

"Fine," Barton agreed, but at least instead of pacing he went and found himself a far corner of the caved-in room to sit in.

An hour passed by where Tony went back and forth from dozing lightly to running schematics of potential suit improvements through his brain. When the alarm beeped that he was to make contact with S.H.I.E.L.D. again, he saw Clint slowly raise his head from his arms – the first movement from the archer since he had sat down.

"Steve, tell me you have good news," Stark practically begged as soon as he got his helmet back on so he could communicate through Jarvis. "Clint's boring me to tears down here."

"Sorry, Tony, we're working as fast as we can, but it's gonna be a while longer. We can't risk knocking the wrong stone loose."

"Yes, please don't do that. I'd hate to die down here while at the wrong end of the silent treatment."

Steve laughed. "If you guys are going to kill each other, do me a favor and let me know first. _I'd_ hate to spend all this time digging you out just to find you already finished what a building falling on your heads couldn't."

"Thank you so much for your concern and your compassion," Tony said dryly. "Do you have an ETA?"

There was silence on the line for a few seconds before Rogers came back. "We're thinking three, maybe four more hours."

Stark groaned. "If you don't hear from me within the next hour, assume I've done something incredibly irrational to amuse myself, and either Clint's murdered me, or I killed him in self defense."

He killed the line before Captain Boyscout could reply.

"How long?" Clint asked, and any thoughts Tony had of bugging the crap out of his teammate died at the weak quality of Barton's voice.

He stood up quickly and took a step towards Hawkeye. "Hey, what's-"

"Don't," Clint ordered, holding up a hand and scooting further away. "Don't come too close."

" _Cliiiint_ ," Tony drew out in a warning manner. "What aren't you telling me?"

"How long?" Barton asked again, clearly trying to sidestep Stark's question.

"Steve said three to four hours. Is that going to be a problem?"

"Maybe," Clint replied quietly. "Listen, don't…don't come near me, no matter what happens, okay? And don't take your helmet off again."

Tony took another step forward, but stopped when Barton inched along the wall even more. "If you don't tell me what the hell is going on, I'm going to run over there and give you a hug that would make Thor proud."

Clint eyed him for a minute, trying to gauge the sincerity of his words before dropping his head. "I didn't…I didn't fall against a window," he explained.

Dread crept into Stark's bloodstream at that admission, and though he feared he already knew the answer, he had to ask the next question. "How'd you cut up your arm, Clint?"

"I was in the, uh, I was still in the freezer when the first shockwave hit…"

The freezer. The still-working freezer that Clint had told him was full of vials of god-knew-what. The archer had been looking for documentation that would identify the contents of the rows of little glass tubes.

"There was a…" Clint chuckled lightly, "…a stupid chart just tacked up on the back wall, right there for anyone to see. One second I was looking over it, and the next I was thrown into the racks. There were at least five vials broken…"

Without thinking about it, Stark shifted forward again. Clint didn't seem to notice this time. "What was in them, Clint? What was in the vials?"

Barton's eyes glazed over slightly as he answered, staring straight ahead at nothing. "Black pox. Some sort of…enhanced stream of black pox." He shifted his gaze up to his friend. "Five vials, Tony. Five vi…and I've already got a fever…"

He dropped his head back into his hands as the words sank in with both of them. Tony flipped the communication line back on. "Steve, we've got a major problem."

"What happened?" Steve responded without jest, hearing the alarm in Stark's voice.

"You need to get us out of here right now. Scratch that, five minutes _before_ now, or you're only going to be sending the rescue party down for one of us."

_**~AV~AV~AV~AV~AV~AV~AV~** _

Tony sat on his rock quietly scanning the screens on the inside of his visor digging up everything he could find on small pox, specifically the hemorrhagic kind. The things he was reading didn't bode well for his ailing friend, and to make it worse, a virus that should have taken days to even _begin_ running its course had revealed its first symptoms within less than two hours in Barton. Stark kept all the little factoids to himself, however, not wanting to alarm his too-quiet friend any further.

"From what I'm seeing here you aren't contagious unless contact is made with any bodily fluids, or my face is within awkwardly close proximity to yours for an uncomfortable period of time," he supplied, hoping to lighten the situation some.

"I know, I read that in the chart," Clint mumbled back, keeping his head buried in his arms. "That's why I didn't say anything when you took your helmet off at first…and I wasn't sure if the virus was even still alive. This place's been abandoned for a while. I was hoping…"

Stark absently raised a hand to his head, even though he couldn't make contact with his face through the armor. "Maybe you should've told me to keep it on - I would've avoided that nasty collision with the rock. Though now I get why you just stood back while I was bleeding and dazed. Here I thought you were just being an ass, but turns out you were trying not to spread your germs. I forgive you."

"Thanks," Barton murmured, and Stark honestly couldn't tell by the tone whether it was a sincere thank you or the biting one he expected.

Silence fell between them again before Tony softly asked, "How're you holding up?"

Clint shook his head. "Tired. Throat's sore. Other than that, not too bad."

Tony's brow drew together in worry. Clint's built-in response to pain was normally something along the line of _fine, peachy, just dandy,_ or something equally sarcastic, but to just flat out admit that he wasn't feeling well? It was the worst sign Tony could imagine.

Stark stood up. "Look, Clint, I'm not going to catch anything through the armor. It's stupid for me to sit way over-"

"No," Barton demanded, picking up his head to give Stark a stern look. The light from Tony's breastplate illuminated his eyes for a second and he turned his face away with a soft hiss, but not before Tony caught site of something a little more alarming.

"Clint, look at me," he said, his tone leaving no room for argument.

Raising one hand to somewhat shield himself from the light's glare, Barton did as he was asked, revealing the bright red color that had completely replaced the whites of his eyes. The hemorrhaging had already begun. If they didn't get Clint out of there and get working on a cure fast, he wasn't going to last long with the rate the virus was attacking.

A thought struck Tony, and despite Baton's protests, he moved towards the archer with grim determination.

"Tony, I said-"

"I need a blood sample," Stark said.

Clint shakily pushed himself to his feet and tried to keep himself distanced from his determined friend. "Didn't we just say no contact with bodily fluids?"

"I won't be touching anything directly. The suit? Yes. Me? Not so much. I can do an analysis of the virus and have Jarvis send it off to Banner. We can have a cure ready and waiting by the time Rogers gets his slow ass down here."

"There's no cure for small pox, Tony," Clint pointed out, defeat in his tone. "Risking exposure to yourself…it's pointless."

"Hey, if lesser men than I could pretty much wipe the virus off the face of the Earth with nothing more than a simple vaccine back in the 70's, I'm pretty sure Banner and I can whip up a cure for a genetically altered version of the strain now. Piece of cake."

"Tony-"

"Don't argue with me, Barton, you can't win. You've got nowhere to go, and you look like a newborn calf trying to stand right now. It's kind of pathetic, actually… You can't fight me on this one."

Clint's knees buckled, and Tony crossed the little remaining distance in time to catch him before he hit the ground.

"Please, don't," Barton whispered in a last, desperate attempt to keep his friend safe.

"Already too late," Tony informed him, touching an armored hand to the blood smeared on Clint's arm.

He gently lowered the archer down and laid him out flat, doing a scan on his vitals. His breathing was a little shallow, heart rate a little high, and the fever was a few degrees hotter than Stark was comfortable with. Cursing their lack of water or anything else that could help make his friend a little more comfortable, Tony simply sat down in the rubble beside him and began to talk while Jarvis started in on the blood analysis.

"You know what this place kind of reminds me of?"

"Any number of other buildings we've managed to blow up?" Clint answered.

Tony smiled at the smartass answer. _That_ sounded more like the Barton he knew. "Yes, but this time we can report to Coulson that we honestly had nothing to do with it. In fact, I might be tempted to turn in the paperwork on time just to see the look on his face. I don't think that man knows how to talk to us if it isn't coming out as a reprimand. He'll be rendered completely speechless, I'm sure."

"I didn't get reprimanded so much before you came along," Clint pointed out.

"That's not what your file said. Seems someone was a little anti-authority figure before I ever stepped into the picture."

Barton breathed out a sigh, and continued to speak without opening his eyes. "That was a long time ago…and stay out of my files. I don't go nosing into yours."

Tony frowned. "Hmm…too bad. I'm a fascinating case study."

Clint opened his mouth to respond, but suddenly jerked up onto one elbow, twisting away from Stark to vomit violently onto the dusty ground.

"Jesus," Tony bit out and knelt over his friend, helping to support his weight until he was done, then gently gripping under his arms to pull him away from the mess.

"There was blood," Clint gasped as Stark set him back down. "I could taste it…there was…"

"I know," Tony said, laying a calming hand on Barton's chest. "You're gonna be okay, buddy. We'll get you out of this. I promise."

He prayed to every deity he could think of that he'd be able to keep that promise.

_**~AV~AV~AV~AV~AV~AV~AV~** _

"What if we isolated the thirty-fifth…yes, you're right, that's too risky…"

Tony continued to discuss the nature of the virus with Banner, but so far every time they thought they'd found a solid path to take, some new issue would arise to block their progress. It wasn't looking well for Barton, but they were determined not to give up until they figured it out, or their friend died before they could.

"Hey, Tony?" Steve interrupted. "How's it going with the cure?"

"It'd be better if someone would quit butting in," Stark snapped back in frustration.

Rogers didn't take it personally knowing the stress everyone was under. "Sorry, I just wanted to let you know that I think we found a safe place to drill into your ceiling without bringing everything down on you. We're going to make a small hole, just enough to drop you guys some water, okay?"

"Yeah, hold on." Tony moved back over to Clint's side, who was sleeping fitfully. "Clint, buddy, I need to take you over where there's more cover just in case those idiots decide to drop more rocks on our heads."

"They're getting…through?" Barton murmured, a little bit of hope sneaking back into his voice.

"Yep," Stark grunted as he lifted the archer's sturdy form from under his arms again, pretty much just dragging him over against the wall beneath where the lobby's balcony was jutting out of the stone a little overhead. "If they manage to not kill us in the process, Steve said he'll be sending us some water. That should help liven you up a little bit, huh?"

"Yeah…" Clint breathed out slowly, his eyes slipping shut again.

"Hey, why don't you stay awake for a bit, okay?" Tony moved to place his hand on Barton's side, but at the light touch Clint's eyes shot open and he let out a short, guttural cry of pain followed by several puffed breaths between clenched teeth.

"'m okay," he hissed, probably more to himself than Tony. "…mmph…I'm okay…"

"Right, you're just fine," Stark repeated absently as he gently pulled up on Barton's armor. The blackening bruise wrapping around Clint's left side looked bad, and Tony glanced up to see a red-tinged tear trailing down his friend's face.

Barton wiped it away, oblivious of the crimson smear he had just painted across his cheek. "How long?"

Tony fumbled over the question for a minute, not knowing exactly what Barton was asking. How long before they found a cure? How long before Rogers got them out? How long before it was too late to help him?

"The water," Clint clarified, catching Stark's hesitation. "How long before…?"

"Steve, we're ready," Tony informed his team leader first, then positioned himself so any possible falling debris would be completely blocked from Hawkeye's prone body. "Just a few minutes," he assured his friend.

"Good…that's good…throat's killin' me." Clint's eyes shut again, but he forced them open of his own accord. "If I fall asleep before it gets here…just hit me in the side again…does the trick pretty good."

"I didn't hit you," Stark said in a false offended tone. "And if I did, it'd be much more fun to punch you in the face."

Barton let out a sound that was part laugh, part cough. "You'd really hit a…dying man in the face? That's low, Tony…even for you."

"Well you're not dying, so I think it's perfectly reasonable." It was getting difficult to keep the usual snarky quality in his tone. Clint _was_ slowly dying, and they both knew it.

"Liar…" Barton said with a smirk, the surety of the statement coupled with the dark humor hitting Tony like a fist in his gut.

The banter game wasn't fun anymore. Luckily, the sound of a drill overhead put an end to the macabre exchange. For once, Tony was glad to have something around to drown out his ability to speak.

_**~AV~AV~AV~AV~AV~AV~AV~** _

The next hour would forever be a blur to Stark, and for the life of him he couldn't figure out whether it was due to his concussion or to simple trauma. They had been in bad situations before, scary-as-fuck situations with explosions and gunfire and the threat of the apocalypse knocking on their door, but nothing that rendered him so afraid for a friend that he needed to block parts of it from his memory. Maybe it was the helplessness of the ordeal – that he wasn't dealing with a threat in the form of a villain he could knock the shit out of, or a gunshot wound he could quickly stitch up, or a broken bone that could be set and mended. There was no reason in this, in watching one of his brothers slowly fade away from a tiny microscopic organism ravishing his organs. There was no honor in going out like that, no epic tales he could pass down to his future generations about "the friend that sacrificed himself to save humanity." It was a forgotten virus inflicted through the course of a violent act of nature, and the ensuing battle was only an internal one that Clint was destined to lose.

He remembered the look of relief on Barton's face when the cool water soothed his burning throat, just before he started spitting up blood. He remembered pulling him upright into a sitting position, and sliding in behind him to brace him against his chest to make sure he didn't choke. He remembered watching more dark patches slowly appear here and there beneath Barton's skin, more areas where he was bleeding out without actually spilling any to the ground. He remembered yelling at Banner to fucking figure it out, and at Steve to get them the fuck out of that building right the fuck now. He remembered pleading with Clint to just hang on while he watched a crimson darker than his armor's shade dripping sluggishly down the metal where it leaked from Barton's nose and slack mouth. He remembered light bursting in from above and people in HAZMAT suits sliding down their lines. He remembered struggling to keep Clint close when they tried to pull him away until Steve knelt down in front of them, risking exposure to the virus by opening the visor on his suit just to ensure Stark that everything was going to be okay. He remembered letting go, grief washing over him as he watched his friend's limp body get hauled away and laid out in the light, the people in their suits swarming over him like ants scurrying in to devour a carcass. He remembered someone saying it was going to be too late, and someone else telling them to shut the fuck up – that might have even been him, but he couldn't be sure. He remembered being helped to his feet just as someone shouted, "We're losing him!", and stumbling over to drop down at Clint's head. He remembered gripping his friend's face, flipping up his own visor so he could lean in close and speak to him without the words getting lost behind metal and glass, mumbling something over and over again that he could no longer recall. He remembered nothing beyond that until he woke up in a homemade quarantine ward back in his own mansion.

Steve was with him. Clint was not.

"No," Tony whispered when that realization dawned on him.

"He's alive, Tony," Steve said calmly. "He's in bad shape, but he's alive."

The sudden lump in Tony's throat rendered him unable to speak, so Steve kept talking, filling in the blanks. According to Rogers, with Stark's assistance Banner had been able to formulate the cure just in time to get it to Clint.

Tony didn't remember being the one to help clue Banner in on the last piece of the puzzle.

It took a little longer to get it down into the building because drilling had formed a crack in the structure, making the walls even more unstable than they already were. A whole portion of the room had tumbled in, but Tony had carried Barton to the corner where he shielded him with his own body, mindless of the heavy pieces of stone bashing down on him from above. When it stopped, he had unearthed the two of them and hauled Clint back out on top of the rubble where he continued to sit and watch over his charge.

Tony remembered none of that, either.

When the rescue crew came down to help, Stark had taken his responsibility to protect his friend so seriously that he was like a pitbull guarding its master, threatening to blast anyone to so much charred flesh that got too close until Steve revealed himself.

Tony apologized for that, which Rogers waved away.

When Clint was crashing and Stark had taken it upon himself to guide him back from the edge, one of the medics had noticed blood running down the back of Tony's neck to drip down and mingle with the archer's on the ground, an injury to the back of his head from his own helmet denting in upon being struck during the partial building collapse. They had tried to pry him away, to tend to him while the others worked on reviving Clint, but he refused to move. He simply sat there and muttered something quietly to the dying man until his hands moved down to Clint's chest, and he ordered Jarvis to adjust the electricity levels to administer the shock himself. He promptly went back to his muttering, keeping his face close enough to Clint's that each time the man's body jumped with the electric charge, blood came up to land on Tony's cheeks. Six times Tony had to hit him before Jarvis and another medic simultaneously alerted him of a weak, but steady pulse.

"You kind of passed out after that," Steve finished.

Tony shook his head. "I don't…I don't remember..." He looked up into his team leader's eyes. "Are we-?"

"Banner whipped up more of the cure while we were flying home. You started coming down with a fever about an hour after we got you guys out of there, but the antigens kicked in pretty fast. No other symptoms."

Stark nodded, still a little in shock as he tried to take it all in. "What did…what did I say to him?"

Steve shrugged. "You'll have to ask him when he wakes up."

Tony snorted. "The guy was technically dead. I doubt he'll be able to tell me much of anything."

Rogers shrugged again and hopped back into his bed. "Maybe not. We're stuck here for at least two days before they decide whether we're a risk or not anyway, so maybe you'll remember on your own. In the meantime, they left us with plenty of magazines to read."

Stark glanced around the room, actually inspecting it for the first time. "They couldn't bring us a TV?"

Steve smirked. "I asked them not to. I can't sleep with that thing on, and you know it."

"Are you implying I'd use that for my general amusement?" Tony asked innocently.

"Yup." Steven's smile grew wider as he engrossed himself in his reading.

Sighing, Stark simply laid back down and closed his eyes, blowing out all the tension in his body in one long breath. His friend was still alive. That's all that really mattered for the time being.

_**~AV~AV~AV~AV~AV~AV~AV~** _

"St'p it," Clint murmured, annoyed, as he brushed away the thing that was consistently tickling his face. It returned with a vengeance, trailing down his cheek and moving under his nose. "Cut 't out, Tony."

The object disappeared. "How'd you know it was me?"

Barton cracked open his eyes and did his best to glare at the feather in Stark's hand. "'Cause you're an asshole," he grunted, and tried to roll away from the obnoxious man. A hand on his shoulder stopped the movement.

"Don't," Tony said sternly, but somehow gently at the same time. "You don't want to rip anything out."

Confused, Clint looked down at the myriad of tubes running from his body to different machines. "Oh," he muttered, then repeated it again with more understanding as the memories started flooding back in. He looked back up at Tony, alarm in his eyes.

"Relax, you'll be fine," Stark said casually as he pulled a chair up beside the bed. He pointed at the machines. "This is all to just make sure everything works properly before you're ready to go out in the world on your own again. You were in pretty much full organ failure, you know; and as exciting as that was, I don't recommend taking a second go at that. I don't really appreciate the heart attack you nearly gave _me_ in the process."

Barton smirked. "Awww…were you worried…'bout me?"

The smart remark died on Tony's lips as he took in the dark circles under Clint's eyes, his pupils still dull and far too lifeless for Stark's comfort. "Yeah, actually, I was, and if you do anything like that to me again, I'm following you into the afterlife just to kick your lazy ass."

"Lazy?"

"Yes, lazy. Do you have any idea how much work I had to do while you were busy laying around down there? I got a concussion, you know, _and_ I had to spend two days with Steve in lockdown. With no TV. What've you been doing the last two days? Oh, that's right, goofing around in dreamland probably surrounded by super models in string bikinis."

Clint raised an eyebrow at that and shook his head. "No beautiful women." A look of deep concentration crossed his face for a few seconds, and Tony almost asked him if he was in pain before he spoke again. "I was dreaming…I don't know…it was dark." He glanced up at Stark, and a spark of anger flashed through his eyes. "You were grabbing my face…calling me names."

Tony cocked his head to the side in thought. It definitely sounded like something he'd do. "Do you remember anything else?" he asked, then quickly corrected himself. "I mean dream, did you dream anything else?"

The anger disappeared and was replaced with amusement. "Yeah," Clint said, his voice coming out in a breathy whisper. He shut his eyes, sleep pulling at him again. "You said if…if I made it through…you'd sing _Barbie Girl_ on the roof…in your boxers."

Stark sat up straight in his seat. "I did not!"

Clint nodded slowly. "Said it…a few times. Figured that was…worth hanging around for…"

"I was concussed and have no memory of that," Tony argued, completely dropping the pretense that this was all just a weird dream.

Barton forced his eyes open again. "You promised."

Stark slouched back in his seat. "Shit," he muttered.

"With news helicopters," Clint added before he couldn't keep himself awake anymore.

There was no way in hell he was doing that, promise or not. In fact, Hell would have to freeze over, thaw out, refreeze, then get turned into a ski resort before Tony would even _consider_ following through on that promise.

A low whimper from the bed had Stark reaching his hand out and resting it ever-so-gently on his friend's rising and falling chest, calming him. In that instant, he knew he was screwed. Sighing, he asked Jarvis to quietly play _Barbie Girl_ on repeat so he could memorize it for his little concert. If having to sing an idiotic song in his boxers on the roof for all the world to see was what it took to bring a brother back from the dead, he supposed it was worth the price. Seeing the little smile form on Clint's face when the song rolled around for a third time, he _knew_ it was worth it.

_**The End!** _


End file.
